"Australia to thank . . ."

New Zealand just had the warmest August on record, and records have been kept for 155 years. Dunedin's average temperature last month was 48.2 degrees F, a little more than 2 degrees more than average. Remember, it's winter here. Some cities had average temperatures that were 4 to 6 degrees warmer than average. The newspaper article about this weather said that strong westerly winds coming off Australia had caused the warm weather. Here's the headline for the article: "Australia to thank for NZ's warmest August on record." For some reason, I thought this was an extremely odd headline, as if Australia had anything to do with westerly winds. Or as if Australia was responsible for its own weather. Or as if these warm temperatures have nothing to do with global warming.